Eastern Front

The Eastern Front during World War II includes the area of military confrontation involving the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. The Soviet Red Army and the Nazi Wehrmacht clashed along the extended Eastern Front, which stretched thousands of miles from the Black Sea in the south to Finland and the approaches to the Arctic Circle in the north.

Eastern Front

Barbarossa: Hitler’s Great Blunder

By Frank Johnson

By April 1941, just over a year and a half into World War II, Nazi Germany was the master of Europe. Read more

After German forces overran their country in September 1939, tenacious Poles, such as these shown in Hungary, escaped the continent to reconstitute their forces in Britain and prepare for the day they could strike back at the Nazis.

Eastern Front

Polish Army’s Heroic Stand at Falaise

By Alan Davidge

Poland does not always get the recognition it deserves for helping to defeat Nazi Germany and end the war in Europe. Read more

Eastern Front

WWII: German Rations and Feeding the Troops of the Third Reich

By G. Paul Garson

It was Napoleon Bonaparte who purportedly said, “An army travels on its stomach.” Toward the goal of feeding his particular army’s stomach more efficiently, in 1795 the French general came up with an interesting solution to the problem. Read more

Eastern Front

Manstein’s Victorious Panzers

By William E. Welsh

Deep snow blanketed the steppes surrounding the northeastern Ukrainian city of Kharkov on February 6, 1943. The soldiers of Major Kurt Meyer’s reconnaissance battalion of SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler shivered from the cold. Read more

The Soviet Union’s two primary antitank rifles saw wide use in World War II despite the limitations of their small calibers.

Eastern Front

Russian Antitank Rifles

By Christopher Miskimon

The German panzers approached the Russian artillery column as it moved to a new position. As the troops trudged toward their new firing point, six panzers appeared, rampaging into the Russian rear area, no doubt searching for vulnerable targets to destroy. Read more

A Finnish pilot at the controls of his Avro Anson FAF LeLv46 AN101 reconnaissance aircraft based at Tikkakoski, March 7, 1940, shortly before the Winter War ended in a truce. The Finns successfully blunted the Soviet invasion, thanks in large part to their air force.

Eastern Front

David vs Goliath

By Glenn Barnett

When Stalin and Hitler signed a non-aggression pact in August 1939, they secretly created spheres of influence. Besides dividing up Poland, they agreed to allow each other free reign over nations and territories they deemed important. Read more

A column of Waffen SS soldiers slogs through snow during the Operation Spring Awakening advance in Hungary. The German offensive was hampered by snow, rain, and deep mud, which bogged down tanks and other vehicles, requiring foot soldiers to undertake much of the fighting with limited mechanized support.

Eastern Front

Desperate Offensive for Oil

By Martin Dougherty

The winter of 1944-45 saw Nazi Germany in a grim position. The Allies were well established in Europe and advancing quickly. Read more

American OSS officers accompanied by Chetnik guerrillas on the move from the original evacuation airstrip in Pranjani, Serbia in anticipation of Soviet Red Army advances, September 10, 1944. The OSS officers were part of OSS operations Halyard and Ranger.

Eastern Front

Hazardous Balkan Air Rescue

By Kevin Morrow

Black puffs from flak bursts began blossoming in the air around Lieutenant Tom Oliver’s Consolidated B-24 Liberator bomber high over the town of Bor, Yugoslavia. Read more

Eastern Front

Konstantin Rokossovsky: Marshal of Two Historic Enemies

By Blaine Taylor

The year was 1944, and the embattled Soviet Union’s top-level field commanders were meeting in conclave to discuss Operation Bagration, an upcoming offensive against the retreating German Army. Read more

Eastern Front

Soviet Operation Bagration Destroyed German Army Group Center

By Victor Kamenir

Overshadowed by the Allied landing in Normandy on June 6, 1944, the Soviet Union’s Operation Bagration on June 23 is one of the least-covered campaigns of World War II. Read more

Eastern Front

The Battle of Moscow: WWII’s First Critical Turning Point

By Jeff Chrisman

Many consider the Battle of Moscow in late 1941 to be the first turning point of World War II on the Eastern Front. Read more

Spanish soldiers—now known as the Blue Legion—dash forward during an assault against Soviet positions defending Leningrad during the summer of 1943. The Spaniards’ eagerness for battle cost them heavy casualties.

Eastern Front

The Blue Division and the Spaniards Who Fought Against Stalin

By Blaine Taylor

The Russian winter of 1941-1942 hit with terrible ferocity. Battling the deadly, numbing cold as well as the massive numbers of Red Army troops were soldiers from sunny Spain. Read more

Eastern Front

Nazi Stuka Ace Hans Rudel

By Ludwig Heinrich Dyck

In the village of Seiferdau, Southern Prussia, an eight-year-old boy with an umbrella jumped out of a second-story window. Read more

Eastern Front

German Spymaster Reinhard Gehlen

By William F. Floyd, Jr.

When Colonel-General Heinz Guderian, chief of the German General Staff, presented German leader Adolf Hitler with estimates of Russian strength for Operation Barbarossa, Hitler declared that the numbers were “completely idiotic” and “pure bluff.” Read more

Eastern Front

Savage Struggle for Leningrad

By Blaine Taylor

Leningrad was the sacred city of Soviet Communism. The port city on the Neva River, 400 miles northwest of Moscow, began life in 1703 as Petrograd, or St. Read more

Eastern Front

Hitler’s Death in the Führerbunker

By Flint Whitlock

His world was literally crashing down in flames around him. Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich, which he had created out of nothing but his own will—an empire that he had once boasted would last for a millennium—was on fire and being torn apart by shot and shell, besieged on all sides. Read more

Eastern Front

Heroic Warsaw Airlift

By Patrick J. Chaisson

Warsaw was burning. Captain Jack Van Eyssen first saw it as a dull glow on the night horizon, 35 miles distant. Read more

Eastern Front

Battle of Berlin Prelude: Küstrin, and Death on the Oder

By Pat McTaggart

“We felt that we were already dead men,” wrote former Captain Albrecht Wüstenhagen in a May 1988 letter to the author of his time in the fortress garrison of Küstrin. Read more

Eastern Front

The T-34 Tank: The Story of Soviet Russia’s Rugged Armored Vehicle

By Phil Zimmer

December 1941 was a dark month and the end of a dark year for the Soviets as the Germans pressed ever onward toward Moscow, the lair where Joseph Stalin and his minions plotted what to do next against the Nazi juggernaut that had, in a few short months, rolled over everything before them. Read more